Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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2017 BMW R NINET SCRAMBLER FIRST RIDE P74 ries as stock. This retains the same headers as the R nineT, but with twin stacked pseudo- SuperTrapp silencers whose engagingly meaty and surprisingly loud droning exhaust note sounds a good deal more flat track than scrambler, and undoubtedly adds to the definite thrill you get from riding this motorcycle any place, any time. Helping deliver this on the new Scrambler is an electric servomo- tor operating an acoustic valve via opening and closing desmo- dromic cables, which Akrapovic dreamed up to meet what BMW correctly identified as its custom- ers' desire for the sonorous Box- er sound to be retained and even amplified, while still meeting Euro 4 noise regulations. That tells you a lot about the ethos governing the development of this bike and the others coming next in the R nineT family—BMW didn't need to get the Slovenian sultans of sound to make the Scrambler sound so good, because it could still have passed the Eurocrat sound tests without that. But the whole idea about bikes like these is that they should be sensually stirring, fun to ride and evocative of tradition, and that's exactly what the new Scrambler—and indeed the origi- nal R nineT, for which Akrapo- vic also produces the exhaust system—are all about. However, the Scrambler badly needs the optional tacho that's EDGAR HEINRICH TALKS Edgar Heinrich, 58, is BMW Motorrad's Head of Design, and has spent most of his career work- ing for the Bavarian-based company, with a first stint from 1986 to 2009. There, he was responsible for the styling of the then-radical four-cylinder K 1200 S and K 1200 R, the HP Megamo- to off-road model, and the Paris-Dakar off-road racers. He also worked on creating the R 1150 GS and R 1200 GS two-wheeled cash registers which continue to represent BMW's gateway to growth and profitability, and was head of the S 1000 RR Superbike design team. But after the debut of that model in 2009, Heinrich moved to India, to become Vice President of Product Development at the country's second largest manufacturer Bajaj Auto, where he worked alongside R&D engineers from its sister company KTM, today BMW's rival for supremacy among Euro- pean manufacturers. But in July 2012 Heinrich rejoined BMW Motorrad as Director of Design, in the wake of the abrupt departure of his predecessor David Robb. One of his first duties was to assume leadership of the team developing the R nineT retro model, and its succession of spinoff variants of which the new Scrambler is the first to reach the marketplace. Edgar, how and why did the Scrambler come about? It actually goes back quite some time ago to the original Lo-Rider concept we built in late 2007. This was the original Boxer Custom concept we did in Munich and was based on radicalizing old BMWs. The funny thing is that in the early 2000s, it was a complete sacrilege to chop an old air-cooled BMW about in any way— everybody thought these things were holy, so they had to be restored to perfection, and there were hardly any customized old BMWs in those days. Therefore the original idea with the Lo-Rider was to do this with a modern base, so we used the HB2 frame and engine to make a semi retro-styled low rider, which we showed at EICMA [Milan] in 2008. Then I left BMW for a while, but when I came back there again from In- dia in 2012, we wanted to do some bikes where the basic idea is not so much about design, but more about the emotional stuff you get from actually riding the bike, from running the engine up, from the vibra- tions, making burnouts, carving turns and so on. It was about making the dynamics a key part of the styling, meaning a bike that was cool to look at but great to ride. So when we wanted to do something for the 90 Year Anniversary of BMW, this is when we came up with the Concept 90, which was a BMW de- sign that was built for us by Roland Sands in California, who's been a big support in everything we do. So was the Con- cept 90 actually your design, rather than Roland's? Of course, yes, it was always BMW designed, BMW created. But Roland executed the design for us—he's been a friend of BMW's for so long, and has always been the right guy for doing stuff like this. So RSD in Los Ange- les is like your BMW factory design studio's back door? Kind of, and you know one important thing about Roland? There's lots of custom guys out there, but whatever he makes is always performance orientated, and built to be ridden—and this of course is what we like at BMW. Because if we do a cus- tom, it has to work—it has